The Jim Bakker Show

Somalia calls for blood donations after bombing, Turkey sends doctors

Civilians walk at the scene of an explosion in KM4 street in the Hodan district of Mogadishu. REUTERS/Feisal Omar

By Maggie Fick

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Somalia is in desperate need for donated blood to treat survivors of a truck bombing in the capital Mogadishu on Saturday that killed more than 300 people and injured at least 400 others, a minister said.

The bombing was one of the worst such attacks in Somalia. Officials said it bore the hallmarks of the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group, but they have not claimed responsibility.

Information Minister Abdirahman Omar Osman said Somalia does not have a blood bank and that the limitations of its health care system was impeding the medical response. Countries including Turkey and Qatar are providing medical assistance.

“We are requesting blood, we are requesting assistance for verifying the dead in order for their relatives to know,” Osman told Reuters by phone from Mogadishu.

Somalia has been mired in conflict since 1991, when clan warlords overthrew a dictator then turned on each other. One of the poorest countries in Africa, it faces severe food insecurity and relies on foreign donors to support its institutions and basic services.

Osman said the bodies of more than 100 people buried on Monday “were blown beyond recognition”, and that he hoped other bodies could still be identified.

Turkish doctors — mainly surgeons and specialists in spine injuries — arrived along with Turkey’s health minister on Monday.

“They are treating people in hospitals in Mogadishu,” the minister said.

Turkey evacuated 35 critically wounded Somalis to Ankara by plane on Monday, the country’s deputy prime minister Recep Akdag told reporters upon returning from Somalia. An increasingly close ally of Somalia, Turkey opened a $50 million military base in the capital last month.

Medicine from neighboring nations Djibouti and Kenya arrived by plane on Tuesday and “air ambulance” was en route from the Gulf state of Qatar, the minister said.

Qatar would be evacuating 25 more injured people to a hospital in Sudan.

(Reporting by Maggie Fick; Additional reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

New York rail operator bolsters security after London bombing

People wait in line to purchase New York subway MetroCards at Pennsylvania Station in New York City, U.S., June 12, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The bombing of a packed London commuter train on Friday prompted officials to beef up security on New York City’s subway system, major commuter rail networks, at airports and other locations.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates mass-transit lines in New York City and the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North commuter lines, said it was closely monitoring the investigation of the fiery blast that injured 29 people in a West London underground station.

The MTA will expand bag screening and deploy extra police patrols on the LIRR and Metro-North, as well as in midtown Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station, “out of an abundance of caution,” spokesman Kevin Ortiz said.

MTA officials were also consulting with New York City police about bolstering security in the subway system, he said.

New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement he had also directed authorities to increase security at airports, bridges, tunnels and other sensitive locations across the state.

“On behalf of all New Yorkers, I condemn the apparent terrorist attack in London today in the strongest possible terms,” Cuomo added.

The NYPD said it has been in contact with London law enforcement officials and has added officers, some heavily armed, and bomb-sniffing dogs to the city’s transit system.

Across the country, Los Angeles police said in a statement they had beefed up their presence on subway, commuter train and bus lines in response to the attack in London.

Amtrak, the country’s nationwide passenger rail carrier, said it was closely following the events in London but was not adding to the layers of security it already has in place.

“Robust security measures are in place at stations, on trains and along the tracks, and partnerships with federal agencies to gather intelligence information are underway,” Amtrak said in a statement.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Dan Grebler and Jonathan Oatis)

Girl strapped with bomb kills five in Cameroon mosque

By Josiane Kouagheu

YAOUNDE (Reuters) – A girl with a bomb strapped to her walked into a mosque in northern Cameroon where it exploded, killing five worshippers in an attack bearing the hallmarks of Islamist militant group Boko Haram, authorities said.

The girl of 12 or 13 years old arrived at the Sanda-Wadjiri mosque in remote Kolofata at the first call to prayer at between five and six a.m., the governor of Cameroon’s Far North region Midjiyawa Bakary told Reuters by telephone.

“The men were bowed in prayer when she came,” Bakary said. “Five of the worshippers were killed and the bomber also.”

He did not name any suspects, but Boko Haram has repeatedly used suicide bombers as well as strapping children with explosives to strike at civilian and military targets.

The Nigerian jihadist group, which is now split into at least two factions, has been fighting for almost a decade to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in the Lake Chad region, where Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad meet.

Allied forces from the four countries have routed it in much of the territory it once controlled, but the group has responded by scattering and stepping up attacks on civilians.

Amnesty International said last week that Boko Haram had killed 381 civilians in Nigeria and Cameroon since the beginning of April, more than double that for the preceding five months.

Of those, 158 of the deaths were in Cameroon, which the rights group linked to a rise in suicide bombings, the deadliest of which killed 16 people in Waza in July.

(Writing by Tim Cocks; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Boko Haram Nigerian child bombings this year are quadruple 2016’s: UNICEF

Nigeria to release $1 billion from excess oil account to fight Boko Haram

By Stephanie Nebehay and Alexis Akwagyiram

GENEVA/LAGOS (Reuters) – Boko Haram militants in northeast Nigeria have sent out four times as many child suicide bombers this year as they used in all of 2016, the United Nations Children’s Fund said on Tuesday.

Eighty-three children had been used as bombers since Jan. 1, 2017, UNICEF said. Of those, 55 were girls, mostly under 15 years old and 27 were boys. One was a baby strapped to a girl. Nineteen children were used last year, UNICEF said.

The Boko Haram insurgency, now in its eighth year, has claimed over 20,000 lives and forced more than two million people to flee their homes over eight years.

The frequency of suicide bomb attacks in northeastern Nigeria has increased in the past few weeks, killing at least 170 people since June 1, according to a Reuters tally.

UNICEF, in a statement released on Tuesday, said it was “extremely concerned about an appalling increase in the cruel and calculated use of children, especially girls, as ‘human bombs’ in northeast Nigeria. The use of children in this way is an atrocity”.

Boko Haram is trying to create an Islamic state in the Lake Chad region, which spans parts of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad. It gained notoriety by abducting more than 200 girls from the northeast Nigerian town of Chibok in April 2014. Aid groups say it has kidnapped thousands more adults and children.

Children who escape are often held by authorities or ostracized by their communities and families. Nigerian aid worker Rebecca Dali, who runs an agency that offers counseling for those who were abducted, said children as young as four were among the 209 escapees her organization had helped since 2015.

“They (former abductees) are highly traumatized,” Dali told Reuters on Monday at the United Nations in Geneva, where she received an award from the Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation for her humanitarian work.

Her team, which includes former police officers, identified some returnees as having been trained as suicide bombers.

“There were two girls taught by Boko Haram to be suicide bombers … The girls confirmed that they were taught that their life was not worth living, that if they die detonating the bomb and killing a lot of people, then their lives will be profitable,” Dali said.

Some 450,000 children are also at risk of life-threatening malnutrition in 2017 by the end of the year in northeast Nigeria, UNICEF said.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said on Monday the country would “reinforce and reinvigorate” its fight against the group following the latest wave of attacks.

Analysts say the Boko Haram faction led by Abubakar Shekau may have been paid ransom by the government to gain the release of 82 of the Chibok girls in May, which then was used to buy weapons and recruit fighters. The government did not disclose details of the negotiations.

(Additional reporting by Kieran Guilbert in Dakar)

Barcelona cell planned big bomb attack, suspect tells court

Catalan Mossos D'Esquadra officers leave the scene where Younes Abouyaaqoub, the man suspected of driving the van that killed 13 people in Barcelona last week, was killed by police in Subirats, Spain, August 21, 2017. REUTERS/Albert Gea

By Adrian Croft

MADRID (Reuters) – An alleged member of an Islamist cell suspected of carrying out last week’s deadly Barcelona van attack told a Spanish court on Tuesday that the group had been planning a much bigger strike using explosives, a judicial source said.

The testimony to a closed hearing at Spain’s High Court came from Mohamed Houli Chemlal, one of four detained suspects brought to Madrid to testify for the first time in court about the plot.

Two of the suspects told the court that Abdelbaki Es Satty, the imam in the small town in northeastern Spain where many of the group came from, was the instigator, the source said, adding that the public prosecutor had asked the judge to send all four to jail while investigations continued.

El Mundo newspaper said Chemlal told the court that the group planned to attack architect Antoni Gaudi’s landmark Sagrada Familia church and other Barcelona monuments but this could not be immediately confirmed.

Chemlal was arrested after being hurt in a blast at a house in Alcanar, southwest of Barcelona, a day before Thursday’s van attack on the crowded Las Ramblas boulevard in Barcelona, which left a trail of 13 dead and 120 injured people from 34 countries.

The 21-year-old arrived at court wearing hospital-issue pyjamas, with a bandaged hand and cuts to his face and bare ankles.

Police found 120 butane gas canisters and traces of a home-made explosive in the rubble of the house at Alcanar, where they say two of the plotters were killed. They believe that the accidental explosion led the group to abandon plans for a bomb attack and to stage a vehicle assault instead.

Tuesday’s court hearing was the first in a long legal process, and it could be months or even years before the case is brought to a full trial.

The four are the only alleged members of the group still alive after the driver of the van that plowed through the crowd in Barcelona, 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaqoub, was shot and killed by police on Monday.

RESORT ATTACK

In little more than a year, Islamist militants have used vehicles as weapons to kill nearly 130 people in France, Germany, Britain, Sweden and now Spain.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the latest attack and a separate deadly assault, hours later, in the coastal resort of Cambrils, south of Barcelona.

In Cambrils, a car rammed passers-by and its occupants got out and tried to stab people. The five assailants, who were wearing what turned out to be fake explosive belts, were shot dead by police, while a Spanish woman died in the attack.

Most of the 12 suspects lived in the town of Ripoll, set in forested hills beneath the Pyrenees north of Barcelona, and most were young men of Moroccan descent.

The four suspects in court on Tuesday were questioned one-by-one by the investigating judge, Fernando Andreu.

Driss Oukabir, 28, whose passport was found in the abandoned van after the Barcelona attack, has maintained his innocence. He told the court that he rented vans used in the attack but believed they were for a house move, according to Europa Press news agency.

Also in court were Mohammed Aalla, 27, owner of the Audi car used in the Cambrils attack, and Salah el Karib, 34, who ran an internet cafe in Ripoll that, according to La Vanguardia newspaper, was used to send money to Morocco.

No charges against the men have yet been specified.

Es Satty, the Ripoll imam who police suspect radicalized the young men, is believed to have died in the Alcanar explosion.

An investigation into whether the cell had international links goes on, police have said.

La Vanguardia said Moroccan authorities had arrested a man who had been in touch with Moussa Oukabir, one of the suspects killed by police in Cambrils, and may have played a role in connecting the Catalan cell with Islamic State.

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb on Tuesday confirmed press reports that the Audi used in the Cambrils attack had been caught on camera speeding in the Paris region days before the Catalonia attacks.

But he told BFM TV that French authorities had been unaware of the existence of the Catalan cell, saying they were “exclusively Spanish”.

BFM TV later reported that it had been Abouyaaqoub and an accomplice who traveled to the Paris region the weekend of Aug. 12-13, staying overnight at a hotel.

Spanish police have sought information from Belgian authorities on a visit the imam, Es Satty, made there last year.

(Additional reporting by Julien Toyer, Inmaculada Sanz and Carla Raffin and Richard Lough in Paris; Editing by Julien Toyer and Mark Trevelyan)

Texas man charged with trying to blow up Confederate statue

By Alex Dobuzinskis and Gina Cherelus

(Reuters) – Authorities in Houston charged a 25-year-old man on Monday with trying to blow up a Confederate statue, federal prosecutors said, following demonstrations and fierce debate in the United States about race and the legacy of America’s Civil War.

Word of the arrest of Andrew Schneck came just hours after the University of Texas at Austin said it moved statues tied to the Confederacy at its campus because they had become “symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism.”

White nationalists rallied earlier this month against proposals to take down a similar statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, and one woman was killed when a man crashed his car into a crowd of anti-racism counterprotesters.

The violence triggered the biggest domestic crisis yet for President Donald Trump, who provoked anger across the political spectrum for not immediately condemning white nationalists and for praising “very fine people” on both sides of the fight.

On Saturday night, a park ranger spotted Schneck kneeling in bushes in front of the General Dowling Monument in Houston’s Hermann Park, Federal prosecutors said in a statement.

In Schneck’s possession were a timer, wires, duct tape and two types of explosive including nitroglycerin, according to the prosecutors who described it as one of the world’s most powerful explosives. The items could have been used to make a viable explosive device, the prosecutors’ statement said.

If convicted of trying to maliciously damage or destroy property receiving federal financial assistance, Schneck faces up to 40 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

“It’s an evolving situation and the investigation is continuing,” Schneck’s attorney, Philip Hilder, said by phone. “So far I have not seen any evidence and it would be premature to comment at this time.”

A growing number of U.S. political leaders have called for the removal of statues honoring the Confederacy. Civil rights activists charge they promote racism while advocates of the statues contend they are a reminder of their heritage.

The city of West Palm Beach near Miami became the latest community on Monday to prepare to remove a Confederate symbol. The monument in a public cemetery belongs to the Daughters of the Confederacy, and it will be stored for the organization after its removal, Mayor Jeri Muoio told reporters.

Among the four statues removed overnight at the University at Austin was one of General Robert E. Lee, who led the pro-slavery Confederacy’s army during the Civil War.

Fenves said the statue of Lee and two others will be placed in the school’s Briscoe Center for American History and made available for scholarly study.

The school’s president, Greg Fenves, said in a statement that the monuments had to go following the “horrific displays of hatred” in Virginia that shocked and saddened the nation.

There are about 700 monuments to the Confederacy in public spaces across the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, with the majority of them erected early in the 20th century amid a backlash among segregationists against the civil rights movement.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Andrea Ricci)

Kansas man gets 30-year sentence for foiled bomb plot targeting U.S. military base

U.S. Army Soldiers, assigned to 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, fire a TOW missile from a Bradley Fighting Vehicle during training at Fort Riley, Kansas, May 18, 2016. U.S. Army photo by Capt. Jonathan Camire

(Reuters) – A Kansas man was sentenced on Monday to 30 years in federal prison for plotting a failed suicide bombing at a U.S. military base on behalf of Islamic State, federal prosecutors said.

John Booker Jr., 22, of Topeka, pleaded guilty in February to plotting the April 2015 attack on Army personnel at Fort Riley, Kansas, and aiding the Islamic State fight against the United States, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Booker was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kansas, on one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and one count of attempted destruction of government property by fire or explosion.

Booker was arrested as part of a sting operation in which he went to Fort Riley with two undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation agents to detonate what he did not know was an inert bomb.

Booker had planned to build a vehicle bomb holding 1,000 pounds (455 kg) of ammonium nitrate and trigger it himself, dying in the process, the Justice Department statement said.

Prosecutors said they had tracked Booker since he posted Facebook messages in March 2014 in which he said: “Getting ready to get killed in jihad is a HUGE adrenaline rush!!” He had been in unwitting contact with an undercover FBI agent since October 2014.

A friend of Booker, Alexander Blair, of Topeka, pleaded guilty to storing bomb equipment for him and was sentenced to 15 months in prison in October 2016.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Taliban suicide car bomber kills dozens in Afghan capital

An Afghan shopkeeper inspects his shop after a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan July 24, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail

By Hamid Shalizi and James Mackenzie

KABUL (Reuters) – A Taliban suicide attacker detonated a car bomb in the western part of Kabul on Monday, killing up to 35 people and wounding more than 40, government officials said, in one of the worst attacks in the Afghan capital in recent weeks.

Police cordoned off the area, located near the house of the deputy government Chief Executive Mohammad Mohaqiq in a part of the city where many of the mainly Shi’ite Hazara community live.

Monday’s suicide bombing, which targeted government personnel, continued the unrelenting violence that has killed more than 1,700 civilians in Afghanistan so far this year.

The Taliban, which is battling the Western-backed government and a NATO-led coalition for control of Afghanistan, has launched a wave of attacks around the country in recent days, sparking fighting in more than half a dozen provinces.

“I was in my shop when suddenly I heard a terrible sound and as a result all of my shop windows shattered,” said Ali Ahmed, a resident in the area of Monday’s blast.

Acting Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danish said at least 24 people had been killed and 40 wounded but the casualty toll could rise further.

Another senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the incident with the media, said the toll stood at 35 killed. That was in line with a claim on Twitter by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, who said 37 “intelligence workers” had been killed.

Mujahid said in a tweet claiming responsibility for the attack the target had been two buses that had been under surveillance for two months.

Government security forces said a small bus owned by the Ministry of Mines had been destroyed in the blast but the National Directorate for Security, the main intelligence agency, said none of its personnel had been hit.

Three civilian vehicles and 15 shops were destroyed or damaged in the blast, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

At least 1,662 civilians had already been killed in Afghanistan in the first half of the year.

Kabul has accounted for at least 20 percent of all civilian casualties this year, including at least 150 people killed in a massive truck bomb attack at the end of May, according to United Nations figures.

The Islamic State group claimed an attack on a mosque in the capital two weeks ago that killed at least four people.

On Sunday, dozens of Afghan troops were under siege after Taliban fighters overran a district in northern Faryab province, a spokesman for the provincial police said.

There was also fighting in Baghlan, Badakhshan, and Kunduz provinces in Afghanistan’s north, and Kandahar, Helmand, and Uruzgan in the south, according to officials.

The resurgence of violence also coincides with the U.S. administration weighing up its strategic options for Afghanistan, including the possibility of sending more troops to bolster the NATO-led training and advisory mission already helping Afghan forces.

(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi and James Mackenzie; Editing by Paul Tait)

Taliban suicide car bomber kills dozens in Afghan capital

An Afghan shopkeeper inspects his shop after a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan July 24, 2017.